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The Transfer of Kasimir Malevich’s Painting Black Square to the State Hermitage

2002

One of the most famous works of 20th-century Russian art entered the Hermitage collection.

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich
Black Square
Circa 1930
Oil on canvas

In 2002 the painting Black Square (Canvas, oil paint; 53.5 х 53.5 cm) by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (1878-1935) entered the collection of the State Hermitage. Black Square is one of the most famous works of Russian art from the century which has just ended.

The first Black Square was painted in 1915 and became a turning point in the development of the Russian Avant-Garde. This black square on a white background became a symbol and the basic element in the artistic system of Suprematism, a step in the direction of а new art. Malevich painted four Squares between 1915 and the early 1930’s, all developing a single theme. They differ from each other not only in sequence and date of creation but in colour, the way they are drawn, and texture. Malevich returned to the theme of the Black Square when he needed to present his own work in a weighty and substantial way. This was often linked to exhibitions that were very important to him.

The creation of the smallest and, apparently, the last Black Square is connected with the theme of red and black, which was so important to Malevich. Perhaps it was painted to be part of a matched pair with his red square shown in the exhibition entitled Artists of the RSFSR During the Past 15 Years, which took place in Leningrad in 1932 and became the last significant public appearance of the Avant-Garde. Two squares – black and red – were the central point of the showing of Malevich’s works in the exhibition. If this Black Square closed out the series, then the artist, who was tired from his professional struggle and from illness, symbolically, on a new circuit, once again repeated his “victory over the sun.” (A black square blocking out the sun first appeared in 1913 in sketches for the decorations to the futuristic opera Victory over the Sun.)

Despite the author’s notation "1913" on the back of the canvas, the last square is usually dated to the end of the 1920’s and beginning of the 1930’s insofar as there is no evidence it existed earlier. It turned up among the several paintings by Malevich which, following his death, stayed in the family and were not given to the Russian Museum by the artist’s heirs. Following the death in 1991 of the artist’s widow, Natalya Andreevna Manchenko, the final version of the Black Square , together with Malevich’s Self-Portrait and Portrait of the Artist’s Wife were handed down to her relatives and then were sold by them to the Inkombank collection.

In 2002 the corporate property of Inkombank was sold at auction. However, the Black Square did not appear in the auction. The painting was acquired for the State Hermitage by the RF Ministry of Culture. The one million dollars needed to purchase this work was donated by Vladimir Potanin, a well-known benefactor of the arts and head of the Interros holding company, who had already provided financial support for the projects of the State Hermitage on a number of occasions in the past. Thanks to the company’s assistance, restoration work has been done on the halls of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the General Staff building and on the Chariot of Glory atop the Arch of the General Staff. This financial assistance has also made possible the publication of the series entitled Pages in the History of the Hermitage.